RTML - The templating language created by pg

http://developer.yahoo.com/stores/V1/rtml.html

by IsaacSchlueter • 18 years ago

32 13 18 years ago

developer.yahoo.com

dshah• 18 years ago

What I find interesting is how many people independently arrived upon this "put logic in markup" approach to building customizable web applications.

Allaire had a fair amount of success with this with ColdFusion.

furiouslol• 18 years ago

And FBML

cturner2• 18 years ago

Unfortunately when you ty to find a system that is pure in separating logic from presentation you run into a situation of needing to have a logic core with no user interface assumptions wrapped by an interface filter. Building a simple implementation of this is not too hard, but doing it in a way that gives you the sorts of flexibility that will allow you to build something your users are happy with is very complicated.

I have an idea that such a thing is possible and have been working on just such a project for several years, but it's non-trivial, and I don't know of anyone having achieved it so far.

There are lots of systems that claim to separate UI from logic but which are in fact innundated with assumptions about state transitions. At some level, every system I've seen assumes a binding between GUI and application logic, even if it's not as obvious as in this case.

baltoo• 18 years ago

Isn't a fundamental problem that form is function? With that I mean that in the end the form of the UI is part of it's function. So are other parts, e.g. "content" is part of the UI's function as well.

This would imply that there's no true dichtomy between logic and presentation as such, but rather different types of functionality. Just as there are very seldom any bulk-heads between different types of a whole's functionality in general, I think it would be impossible to truly separate logic and presentation. (Not that some separation cannot go a long way.)

In the end we cannot escape presentation at any stage of the design of a system. If not anything else we have an internal presentation for the internal representation of the external problem. This alone makes us design things assuming much about the form. Is there even such a thing as representation without presentation? With that I again mean that presentation is a fundamental and non-separable part of any thing we handle.

I'm sorry if this comes across as mumbling. I've troubles expressing these thoughts clearly. Guess I don't understand them well enough..

apgwoz• 18 years ago

Many use http://www.fusebox.org/ or some other MVC framework on top of it, though (not all).

snorkel• 18 years ago

Putting a little bit of logic in markup is OK, and Yahoo store pages are a good example of when that is appropriate because Yahoo store merchants just want some customization logic not a full-blown web app.

Putting a lot of logic in markup gets messy fast hence the rise in popularity of MVC frameworks for web apps. Even ASP had to evolve from "code in front" to "code behind" support in ASP.NET.

henning• 18 years ago

1. Create a Lisp-based or Lisp-like markup language. Users: "wtf, my eyes".

2. Add isomorphic whitespace and linebreaks that can be easily converted into the original s-expressions. Users: "golly, that's neat!"

silentbicycle• 18 years ago

"Stupid Parenthetical Syntax" vs. "Smart Parenthetical Syntax"

dkd• 18 years ago

Was that written by Paul Graham or by Robert T. Morris?

jsmcgd• 18 years ago

If I remember correctly it was mainly written by PG and named after RTM.

jwilliams• 18 years ago

I often wonder if many of the struggles with HTML/CSS and standards would be alleviated by a strong macro language for markup.

In fact, whenever I touch CSS I often wish it was more like a macro language.

jonknee• 18 years ago

I think the struggles are almost all related to the rendering differences in browsers. That's what makes it (especially CSS) such a pain in the ass.

RTML - The templating language created by pg

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